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Longmont's Zometool settling in (hopefully) for growth phase

Company has invested heavily in its infrastructure

By Tony KindelspireLongmont Times-Call

Posted:
05/18/2013 10:50:42 PM MDT

Updated:
05/19/2013 01:04:29 PM MDT

The roots of Longmont's Zometool date back decades, but the company has undergone a transformation in recent years. Significant investment in its infrastructure and a revamped product line have put it, its principals hope, on the path to growth.

But what it needs now is more customers.

"(Revenue) has been improving, but it's not there yet," said Carlos Neumann, the company's chairman of the board.

"We still have to overcome the explanation issue," added Paul Hildebrandt, president and "chief visionary officer" for Zometool and a man involved in the company for more than three decades.

By "the explanation issue," Hildebrandt is referring to the marketing challenge the company has faced for a long time: What do you call a system of plastic struts and connecting balls that, assembled, can serve as both a child's toy and a tool that helped a scientist win a Nobel Prize in chemistry?

(Dan Shechtman won in 2011 for using Zometool to create a model of a quasicrystal, a type of structure previously thought not to exist.)

Is Zometool a toy? Is it a tool? Is it a scientific research instrument?

"That's easy -- the answer is yes!" Hildebrandt said while giving a tour of his six-employee Longmont shop to a couple of visitors last week. "That's the easiest question I've gotten all week."

Anyone familiar with Tinker Toys will recognize the concept behind Zometool. A solid, hollow plastic connector ball, seven-tenths of an inch in diameter, has 62 holes, or "faces," where the ends of struts are inserted. The ends on the struts are three-, four- or five-sided -- triangle, rectangle or pentagon. Connecting struts and balls together, it's possible to build innumerable shapes, from the simplistic to the complex.

"We keep being astounded by it, and we've been around it a long time," Hildebrandt said.

"We do workshops and every time, somebody builds something that we've never seen before," Neumann added.

A 'new architecture'

The complete history of what is today's Zometool is quite lengthy, but the abridged version is that it starts with inventor Steve Baer, who created a company called Zomeworks. Baer was fascinated by geodesic dome architecture but didn'tlike its limitations. Domes were difficult to build in the 1960s -- they took a of parts, and there were limitations on shape. So Baer invented what became called "zome" geometry. It used fewer parts than dome construction and, because of its concept of connecting struts to nodes, was simpler to build. It could take on a variety of shapes beyond a simple dome.

"Basically, Zomeworks was set up to create new architecture -- the architecture of the future," Hildebrandt said. "And out of their research came the Zometoy. But they didn't make any money off it -- they only sold about 50 kits."

The early Zometoys were crude, Hildebrandt said -- with Wiffle Ball-like connecting balls and wooden struts.

Hildebrandt became familiar with Zometoys after meeting Marc Pelletier, a Baer admirer whom Hildebrandt describes as an "itinerant hippie geometer." Together, after meeting in Boulder, he and Pelletier worked on transforming the early versions of the Zometoy into what is, today -- Zometool.

The key remains the nodes, or connecting balls, Hildebrandt said. Once they found a machinist in Denver that could build what they call "the most complicated plastic injection mold ever designed," Zometool was off and running, although it was more popular with the scientific community than with consumers at first.

The science community remains fans of the company, Hildebrandt said, but now it's consumers they really want to go after.

After a period in its history when it outsourced much of the manufacturing it did to other Longmont-area companies, Zometool has reversed that trend and is bringing everything back in-house.

"The last six years of the company have basically been invested in the necessary infrastructure to prepare for growth," Neumann said.

Making capital investments

Neumann was a customer of Zometool before he ever drew a paycheck from the company, he said. He worked in real estate in Mexico City and liked to experiment with Zometool kits in his off-hours. In 2005, he contacted Hildebrandt, and the two talked about the possibility of Neumann joining the company.

"When I came on board, it was basically a one-man shop," Neumann said. "Paul was wearing all these hats, and he was just being run ragged."

In the past several years, the pair have invested about $1.5 million in the business, Neumann said -- everything from buying their own building and injection molding machines to upgrading the building's infrastructure and its back-office software.

Zometool makes two types of products, Neumann said: Its system kits allow for open-ended construction. The company gives suggestions, but the user is basically free to go where his or her imagination leads. The project kits usually have an end target in mind, although the user is still free to use his or her creativity.

One example of a project kit is Zometool's Bucky Ball. Bucky Ball, Hildebrandt explained, is the scientific nickname given for the spherical molecule called buckminsterfullerene, which is the basis for all nanotechnology.

Try making one of those with Play-Doh.

Zometool kits are built so each can be easily integrated with another. That's what will happen when 93-year-old architect Fabien Vienne, who's been a fan of the company for years, will build his roughly 18-foot-long Zometool sculpture that will hang at a university in Holland.

Zometool's starter kits begin at $59.95, although less expensive kits are available. Check the company's website at www.zometool.com.

Tony Kindelspire can be reached at 303-684-5291 or tkindelspire@times-call.com.

A Zometool assembly at Zometool s Longmont facility on Wednesday. The key to the system is the solid plastic connector ball, which has 62 faces and is used to connect struts that can form an almost infinite number of shapes and structures. (Lewis Geyer/Times-Call)

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